Author: Becky

Recap

Strange week filled with ups and downs and serendipity and labor put into things other than writing.

I get a monthly newsletter from author Carolyn Haines. I’ve downloaded her latest Sarah Booth Delaney mystery, Bones of Holly to my eReader and will be reading it this month. In her most recent newsletter, she provided a link to a free reading of a short novella called “Junebug Fischer” by author Mandy Haynes. Here’s the description: Junebug Fischer will be ninety-six come June. She’s ready to set the record straight and let you know what really happened the summer she turned fifteen. It’s true, she killed someone, but she never killed nobody on purpose. That was purely accidental. I don’t know how long the novella will be free, but this link will enable you to either download it to your favorite reader or open it on your computer to read without downloading: link to read ‘Junebug Fischer’. I enjoyed it, and I’ll be reading more by Mandy Haynes.

December has a few challenging anniversaries, so I’m always grateful for the good stuff. A couple of high points of the week included a good update about a family member’s surgery and a photo my brother texted to a proud sister/aunt showing him with his son and grandsons. I already have that photo printed and hanging in the family and friends gallery in the hall.

For years, I’ve tried to replicate my mother’s recipe for fried corn. She gave me directions. She let me watch her do it. She told me the specific kind of fresh corn on the cob I needed to buy and how to prepare it the way she did. I have never found corn sold under that name. And I have never successfully made a batch of corn that tastes like hers. This week was no exception. I mean, the corn was fine, but it wasn’t hers. I’ve searched and tried online recipes. I’ve enjoyed Lynne’s version that she cooks the way her mother did. Even the best fried corn I’ve eaten doesn’t taste like my mother’s. I try this at most every two or three years, so it’s not a big deal, and in one way, my failure amuses me: my mother would like knowing she did something no one else has been able to do. (There are many others; even if she never acknowledged those, I do.)

In the few years before I was laid off from my job because of the pandemic, one of my holiday frustrations was not having the time to address and send Christmas cards to friends and family. I could start the process in December but sometimes didn’t finish it until my March birthday and, one year, even Easter. No more job meant this is one activity I’ve been able to accomplish since 2020 before Christmas. This year might be my earliest ever, partly because we were able to get a family photo in November thanks to Lindsey.

Yesterday, I dropped the first batch of cards in the mail when I had to pick up more stamps at the post office, and today, I’ll be sending the rest in the batch pictured here.

While finishing the task might not seem like a big deal, this particular activity provides me a much-needed feeling of connection. That’s helpful since I’ve drastically reduced texting and messaging using social media due to ongoing technical problems (e.g., wonky computers, Internet outages) but also the state of the world (watching billionaires have public pissing contests with one another on unnamed apps or millionaires detail their lives via “reality” shows or TikTok videos holds no allure for me at all; your mileage may vary).

I have three gifts to box and ship (once I do a little more shopping) that will include what I think are the last of my cards. After that, I can focus on the remainder of our holiday preparations, including Tom’s birthday on Christmas day, and maybe then, finally, my brain will assure me it’s okay to focus on my fictional work in progress. I need writing to feel balanced, too.

I’m ahead on one thing, though: I have my New Year’s Resolution all ready. =)

World AIDS Day 2022

The U.S. government’s theme for World AIDS Day 2022 is Putting Ourselves to the Test: Achieving Equity to End HIV, which emphasizes accountability and action. This theme echoes the Biden-Harris Administration’s dedication to ending HIV/AIDS as a public health threat worldwide by addressing health disparities in communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and monkeypox.

“This World AIDS Day, we acknowledge the role equity plays in either the success or failure of our Nation’s HIV response. Providing equitable access to HIV testing, prevention, care, treatment, and research is key to ending the HIV epidemic,” said Harold Phillips, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. “The COVID-19 pandemic has tested our resolve and our ability to focus on ending the HIV epidemic. This World AIDS Day, we must recommit and re-energize all sectors of society to center equity within our HIV response by ensuring that everyone with HIV and those at-risk for infection have access to appropriate HIV testing, treatment, and prevention services. We encourage everyone to get an HIV test and to help us combat HIV-related stigma. As we work to implement the National HIV AIDS Strategy, this year’s theme reminds us that the time has come to act, and for all of us to put ourselves to the test of ending HIV.”

Since 2020, I’ve been reminded time and again of the dangers of spreading misinformation and targeting any population as less worthy of care than others and of politicizing a pandemic or health crisis. What I saw in the 1990s happened again: The medical community stepped up, often at risk to themselves, to extend compassion and care to the poorest, the oldest, the most vulnerable among us. Whoever sows divisiveness, intolerance, and hate among us is not acting in the best interests of all of us.

My heart continues to go out for those who struggle with HIV and AIDS, and I’m grateful for the strides that scientific research and medicine have taught us about reacting to and controlling viral pandemics. The knowledge came at great cost. To ignore or dismiss it is a disservice to all people everywhere.

These are the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt Panels that I was a part of. Except for John’s, they were designed by me. Pete Martinez created John’s, and Tom and I were invited to add to it. Those I created were worked on by several people, including my late mother, Lynne, Debby, Amy, Tom, Nora, Vicki, and Lisa.


I have this large notebook filled with photos, mementos, correspondence, programs, and other miscellany documenting some of my experiences related to HIV and AIDS. For the first time in years, I just read my six-page introduction to it. So many details I’ve forgotten about those years, a buffer that nature sometimes provides to help us heal. My memories left me crying, but so, so grateful for the people and places that gave me purpose and passion.

Every time I choose to be kind, to lift my voice for anyone marginalized and mistreated, to urge compassion and acceptance, I hope to honor the people whose names are on these panels. They could have been anyone’s son, brother, lover, friend: ordinary people pursuing their lives. They were made extraordinary by their talents, courage, perseverance, and love of others. They touched untold lives and are missed every day.

Only Over You


I had a post planned for today, but it’ll have to wait. I’m crushed by the news of Christine McVie’s death. I don’t feel like writing much about it, so I thought I’d share photos of a few mementos.


Ticket stub from when I saw Fleetwood Mac at the Coliseum in Birmingham, Alabama, on the Tusk tour in 1980. Amazing concert and my first time to see the band with the Fleetwood/McVie/McVie/Buckingham/Nicks lineup.


My program from that concert.


When Lindsey Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac in the late 1980s, the band recorded Behind The Mask and toured with Billy Burnette and Rick Vito joining the McVies, Fleetwood, and Nicks on stage. I knew every word of every song on the album, so I very much enjoyed seeing them with Tom at the Summit in Houston in 1990, ten years after my first Mac concert.

Twenty-five years later, my favorite version of the band was back: Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks. I got to see them at the Toyota Center with Tim thanks to a friend who gifted us the tickets.

By then, I was part of the cell phone generation, so here’s a blurry photo of Christine on keyboards, with John behind her at the bank of speakers, Mick on his drum riser, and Stevie and Lindsey front of stage. They were fantastic, as if it hadn’t been thirty-five years since that first concert. I’m so grateful I saw them on that tour.

I can’t close without hoping that somewhere, Christine and Dennis are making music together again.

I don’t know who to credit for this photo. If it’s yours and you find it here, please let me know!

A few words from her song “Only Over You,” inspired by and written for and about Dennis Wilson.

Angel, please don’t go
I miss you when you’re gone
They say I’m a silly girl
But I’m not a fool
I’m out of my mind
But it’s only over you
I’m out of my mind
But it’s only over you

Tiny Tuesday!

Starting this day with a silly anecdote and again sharing my Eddie Van Halen Funko.

Last night, Lynne and I were texting about various things that included characters I write or have written or plan to write. Eddie Van Halen was mentioned in passing. We said goodnight, and afterward, I did a few more things on my phone before I closed all the apps and placed it face down on the table next to the bed.

If you know me at all, you know two things. One: With very few exceptions, I don’t like to talk on the phone. If you and I have spoken by phone, it means I’ve overcome my aversion for the sake of friendship and I’ve likely enjoyed those calls because of the friendship. But business calls, calls with other people who don’t like to talk on the phone, calls where it’s hard to hear the other person, GROUP calls on speakerphone–these are not my favorite things.

Two: I fully understand and often say that no one’s dreams are as interesting to anyone as they are to the dreamer. Sorry/not sorry: It’s just true. I think therapists who ask to hear their patients’ dreams are secretly making mental shopping lists, trying to remember lyrics to songs, or doing any other brain exercise while their patients ramble on. They interject an occasional, “What do you think that means?” or “Do you connect this stranger in the dream to someone in your life?” And while the patient then rambles some more, the therapist is thinking, “That Eagles album uses one of the most extended metaphors in modern music…”

This is your chance to stop reading.

I was sleeping soundly this morning around 6:30 and having a dream in which I was in some rural town with my grandnieces and grandnephews. I will spare you the details of which ones and all the things we were doing and discussing. But we decided to go for a walk through the countryside, talking and laughing along the way. We heard the loud noise of a motorcycle coming toward us from a trail/dirt drive, and the rider came into view. He did a few spins, smiled and nodded our way, then turned back the way he’d come. The kids didn’t react much, and I said, “Do you not know who that was?” They shook their heads, and I said, “That was Eddie Van Halen.”

At that point, I could hear someone talking next to me, and I woke up. The voice was coming from my lit up phone, so I picked it up while putting on my glasses. Lynne’s contact picture was on the screen, and the call voice was saying, “Press one to [do something], or press [some other number] to leave a message.” I was confused and I think I pressed one, and the call stopped, and I put the phone down, extremely disoriented. A minute or so later, the phone rang, I answered, and Lynne said, “What?” I explained that my phone, not I, had for some reason decided to call her, so we hung up because FFS, it was 6:30 AM! Right after that, first my phone, then Tom’s, BLARED alerts that the boil water advisory for the city of Houston had been lifted and all water has been found safe.

I then told Tom about my phone deciding to call Lynne for no apparent reason, even though all apps were closed, and the text exchange with her wasn’t the final thing I did on the phone last night. He said, “It’s almost like you told Siri to call Lynne.”

Is it possible that I said, “That was Eddie Van Halen” out loud in my sleep, and does that sound like “Siri, call Lynne?” Especially since I never speak to Siri or give her directions at all.

All I know is, I was up way too early, but I took my meds, mopped the library floor, and filled the dogs’ outside water buckets with safe water that we’d boiled yesterday.

If you stuck with me to the end of this, I’ll remind you that today is Giving Tuesday. If you’re unable to donate to any of the great organizations who help people, animals, and the planet, maybe just start giving your change back to businesses that collect for charity, like McDonald’s does for Ronald McDonald House.

And give a kind thought to anyone–friend, family, dead musician–who can make you smile in a dream–but don’t feel compelled to call me to tell me about it. SORRY, LYNNE! 😄